Ogreable? You better "believe" it! (Review of Shrek)

At the end of the classic tale, "The Wizard of Oz", amidst the whirlwind twister damage and broken beams, the Tinman, The Lion and The Scarecrow stand over Dorothy's bed gazing down at their Princess. Is she alive? Is she happy? Will she take that silly dog and run away again?

Yet Dorothy looks up through glazed eyes and a bruised head but only one thing matters.."There's no place like home".

"There's no place like home".

Shrek is Homecoming, a revisitation and feel-good head-to-toe warmth generated from all the twisted yet poignant fairy tales you believed in as a child. Like "Oz", it is a formula fairy tale. There is your Beast, your Beauty, your Wicked King and Bumbling Sidekick. The Girl has a dream. Girl realizes a dream. But perhaps the dream isn't quite all it's swamped up to be. Or is it?

Our Hero is a mighty green ogre with a Bad Attitude, some incredibly gross habits (and what child doesn't love gross?) and an intensive need for a good gum scraping and tooth whitener. Mike Myers of Austin Powers fame seems to succeed with rotten teeth better than most actors with a million-dollar smile. As big and Bad to the Bone that Shrek is, he is also an "onion": many layers of a Good Man are buried and swaddled deep within the Beast.

Our Faithful Sidekick is an As*, but you gotta love him.
Eddie Murphy is the Donkey, a babbling but good-hearted Mule who attaches himself to Shrek's side and doesn't understand the meaning of Personal Space. Stealing the show with some incredibly funny lines, he also becomes the unlikely Object of Affection for a certain fire-breathing mammal, an interesting and delightful twist of events that the parents will certainly enjoy and understand more than the children.

We have a King, of course, named Farqaat, played by John Lithgow. The movie's premise begins with Farqaat evicting all of the Fairy Tale characters from Dulac who are less than perfect. Perfection in his eyes, of course, is quite a twisted matter, as Farqaat stands about 4'2 but compensates for his height symbolically by erecting the hugest castle in Dulac.

The displaced fairy tale creatures are dumped into Shrek's swamp, and being the quiet and introverted Ogre that he is, he simply cannot condone the company. Watching the Three Blind Mice battling on his slab of a table, he claws at his face and demands to know who is responsible for his Gated Community being occupied by trashy renters.

Visiting Fargaat, Shrek and Donkey are commanded by Farqaat to rescue the Princess and bring her to the King. His motive? True Love? Hardly. Farqaat is a diminutive little man with a diminutive little heart who merely needs a Vehicle to ensure his Kingship.

High Maintenance Ho Ho Ho's

Cameron Diaz is the Princess, encased in her lonely tower far from the center of the Disney parody town of Dulac.
This Princess has been sitting around that little empty chamber quite long enough, thank you. She's got her bags packed, her flight tickets checked and she's ready to go. She's empowered. She's determined. She's run this scenario through her head a thousand times and damn it if this guy thinks he's going to ruin it.
As many Princesses do, she needs to feel the kiss of One True Love, but she also employs some rather Matrix-like talents to prove that she can kick butt. She does it all without messing up her hairdo as well. She is motivated by a secret goal that drives and empowers her.
Inevitably, what she needs and what she gets become two entirely different things. In terms of For Better or For Worse, she gets both...yet no fairy tale story could have had a better ending.

Dreamworks Katzenberg, former Disney Executive, ousted like a Big Green Ogre gets his sweet Revenge with every slap at the Disney icons he can muster. We cheer, we roar-we want More! Dreamworks has created a significantly wonderful parody tale with tremendous graphics and a script that will keep you laughing from minute one to end. Some of the lines go right over the children's heads but straight to your brains, and every adult appreciates when these tasty morsels are tossed at us. Shrek is a non-stop flight from Oz's Yellow Brick Road right to the center of your heart.